Bookshelf Battle

Larry David is my spirit animal.

Bomp bomp bomp….bah bah bah…bah bah bah bah…

BQB here with a review of the latest season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

When we last saw Larry in his HBO sitcom, it was season 8, in 2011, and wow, has time flown.  Since then, Larry has found even bigger stardom playing Bernie Sanders on SNL, but he’s returned for another round of Curb.

If you’ve never seen the show, picture Seinfeld, plus jokes and/or words and/or things that can happen on cable that can’t happen on NBC.  Like the show he created with pal Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is also much ado about nothing.  No one ever grows or achieves or accomplishes, it’s just Larry, playing a parody version of himself, wasting his time on nonsensical worries.

I have to assume that bald and unattractive Larry was the inspiration of Seinfeld’s George Costanza.  You might remember George, a pudgy bald man who ironically, would get hooked up on dates with the most attractive women only to reject them over trivial matters.  Similarly, Larry is 70, fully aware of his ugliness and yet also aware of his various mental dilemmas.  He’d rather be alone than be with a woman who annoys him in the slightest way.

Larry must be a lot of himself into this role.  Recently, when he guest host SNL, he did a bit where he said he could related to Quasimodo from, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”  Surely, Quasi could have found “a” woman but no, the woman had to be the most beautiful woman in all of Paris.  Below average women who were “OK with the hump” would never do.

I might opine Larry’s women troubles probably come in part to his money and success.  If you look like Larry and say, in the real world, are a bus driver, then no, there will not be a bevy of beauties lined up for you to pick through and reject.

At any rate, this long overdue season centers around “Fatwa: The Musical!”  a broadway show Larry has written about Salman Rushdie, a writer who was marked for death by the leader of Iran for his writings.  As the season progresses, Larry teams up with none other than Lin Manuel Miranda to direct the show.  The two butt heads, and how and that’s not when Larry is arguing with star of the show, F. Murray Abraham.

Fan favorites return.  Larry’s best friend/manager Jeff Garlin as Jeff Greene, Susie Essman as Susie Greene, Jeff’s wife whose witchy tirades might send chills up the spine of any many thinking about getting married if they weren’t so funny.  1980s comic Richard Lewis is still himself.  Bob Einstein of “Super Dave” fame remains Marty Funkhauser and Larry just can’t get rid of longtime house guest Leon Black aka JB Smoov.

I give props to Larry.  His main comedic power is self-deprecation.  The whole show just dumps on him.  Everyone thinks he’s terrible.  He thinks he’s terrible.  There’s no drama or crying or tender moments its jut dump on Larry and dump on Larry some more.  Celebrity guests stop by in cameos as themselves to dump on Larry.  There are few celebrities, I think, who would allow themselves to be lampooned so vigorously, but Larry, on the other hand, is the ultimate good sport.

Have you ever had a moment where you felt you were wronged someway, so you took some action to change things, only to wince when you realize that you’ve made things so much worse, and things were so much better before you changed anything?  That’s Larry’s life in a nutshell, and when that tuba plays, he knows he’s effed up.

If you hear that tuba playing in your head, you know you’re becoming like Larry David.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.